Writer of fiction, poetry and essays.

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I saw that this book was voted as the #1 best Halloween book in a Goodreads list. So I decided to take a chance on it, even though I don’t like the only other Bradbury book I’ve ever read, Fahrenheit 451. (I never reviewed it, but my thoughts align with H.R.R. Gorman’s.)

Well, I’m happy to say The Halloween Tree is much better. It starts off with a group of costumed boys gathering to go trick-or-treating on Halloween night. But the leader of the group, a lad named Pipkin, is late. They go to find him, and discover the normally energetic and happy boy is looking unwell. Indeed, he is whisked away in the very claws of Death itself before their eyes.

But a strange figure named Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud appears from the land on which grows the titular tree, and offers the boys a chance to pursue Pipkin’s spirit, in hopes of saving him from an early demise. Mr. Moundshroud then leads them back into the darkest days of pre-history, explaining how early humans feared the death of the sun in the winter, and from there leads them on a tour of proto-Halloween rites throughout western history, from Egypt to Greece and Rome, into Europe and finally to the Americas. At each step they find, and then lose again, some manifestation of Pipkin’s spirit.

It’s a good overview of festivals of the dead throughout history, and Bradbury doesn’t shy away from the darker aspects, like sacrifices. The one thing I don’t quite understand is why he devotes a whole chapter to gargoyles and grotesques. These never struck me as particularly scary. Maybe it’s because my great aunt had a replica of one of the Notre Dame grotesques in her living room, so I always associated them with the decorative sensibilities of older ladies. But I guess it’s all part of the Halloween tradition.

The thing I liked best about the story, (well, apart from, you know, HALLOWEEN!!!) is that it teaches an important lesson about having to pay a price to get something you want. You want Pipkin back? Well, you’re going to have to give up something to get him. It’s a critical thing for kids to learn.

Now, while this may be blasphemous to many in the reading community, I don’t love Bradbury’s prose. He’s a good writer, but he seems self-indulgent, opting for elaborate, florid descriptions when something simple would serve just as well. (Maybe this also explains his love of the overly-ornamented style of architecture such as one finds in cathedrals.)

On the other hand, his character names are fantastic. Besides the aforementioned Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud and Pipkin, we’ve got Tom Skelton, who dresses as a skeleton, and another boy named Hackles Nibley. The image of a tree with jack-‘o-lanterns growing on it is also a memorable one.

Would I rate this as the #1 Halloween book? No. I’d probably give that honor to A Night in the Lonesome October. And if we include not only stories set at Halloween, but scary stories generally, the list gets longer.

But, it’s still a charming seasonal story, and as an overview of Halloween lore for children around the age of 10 or so, it’s an excellent starting point. So if you know any young people who are of an age to catch the All Hallows’ Fever, this book is just the thing for them. Whatever my issues with Bradbury, I’m happy to put them aside in recognition of his services to Halloween.

And with that, I am off to carve some pumpkins. Happy Halloween everybody!

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SPOILER WARNING: The title of this movie spoils the movie because at the end it turns out it’s about this school for girls that is run by Satan. 

But damn, do we take our sweet time about getting there. Martha Sayers is investigating the apparent suicide of her sister, who had been a student at the Salem Academy for Women. She enrolls as a student herself to try to find out what might have driven her sister to this tragic fate.

The Salem Academy for Women is a remote Gothic estate, quite pretty in the daytime but it gets creepy at night, especially when the power goes out in a thunderstorm. Naturally, this is also the time when Martha and her newly-made friend Roberta Lockhart decide is the best time to pursue their investigations, sometimes while clad in nightgowns, natch.

(Strangely, these scenes aren’t as sexed-up as you might expect. From the title and the fact that it was produced by Aaron Spelling, you might be thinking this would be “Jiggle TV”. But it’s not, although it was marketed that way.)

We meet two members of the faculty at Satan’s School for Girls Salem Academy: one is the popular, handsome art teacher, and the other is the weird, creepy psychology teacher. In a massive plot twist that only the most shrewd and careful of dogs could have anticipated, the handsome, popular guy turns out to be Satan. Or in league with Satan. Or something. All we really find out is he’s assembling some manner of coven at the school. It’s not clear what they do, other than murder would-be recruits who try to back out. Also, they wear white, even when you would think any decent devil-worshipping witch-cult would wear black. 

Anyway, it’s stupid and cheesy and a waste of time. Wikipedia claims it was one of the most memorable TV movies of the 1970s. Apparently, you could just broadcast anything in the 1970s and people would watch it. The Star Wars Holiday Special is evidence of this.

But after all, that was the 1970s and there were only three channels and the internet didn’t exist. I watched this in 2025. What’s my excuse?

Well, I’m just interested in all manner of supernatural horror stories. Even the bad ones have something to say. Especially if they have Kate Jackson in them.

Drink up, Kate. You’ll need it for this script.

In the end, this seems to have been part of the wave of what MAD Magazine called “Devil flicks” in the early ’70s, probably stemming from Rosemary’s Baby. But it’s not scary enough to be good horror, not funny enough to be camp, and is just generally baffling as to how anyone thought it was a good idea in the first place.

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It’s been a long time since I read an Agatha Christie book. I read a few Poirot stories as a teenager and liked them, though I found them distinctly inferior to Sherlock Holmes. But this is, as the title suggests, a Halloween story, and so of course I had to read it.

It starts out at an English country house, where Mrs. Rowena Drake is throwing a traditional children’s Halloween party, very much in line with those described in this handbook. Among the adult attendees is Ariadne Oliver, a mystery writer and friend of the great Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.

All is going well until one of the young attendees is found drowned in the tub used for apple-bobbing. Making this even more suspicious is the fact that earlier in the evening, the young girl had proclaimed to everyone at the party that she had once witnessed a murder, though she refused to disclose details.

Ms. Oliver at once contacts her mustachioed friend, and he sets to work on interviewing the attendees at the party. As he does so, more mysterious intrigues begin to emerge about life in the seemingly quiet little village—he dredges up past murders that might fit the bill for what the poor child might have witnessed, as well as a complicated scheme of apparent forgery committed by a now-missing au pair girl. (Yeah, I had to look it up, too.)

The middle of the story dragged a bit, as it seemed like it was just Poirot going around talking to one person after another who laments that crime is worse nowadays because the justice system is always making excuses for criminals, looking for reasons to let them go only to have them kill again. “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent, etc.” There really is nothing new under the sun. If there was one thing that surprised me about this book is how very modern it felt. I think of Agatha Christie as writing a more genteel sort of mystery, but parts of this were surprisingly direct. Strange that so dark a book could be dedicated to P.G. Wodehouse!

In the later stages, our elderly detective ties the threads together and works out who must be responsible for the crimes. Simultaneously, however, another murder is about to take place, under sinister, vaguely ritualistic circumstances, and it’s a frantic rush to stop the lethal hand in time.

Is it a great book? No, I don’t think so. Parts of it were a drag. On the other hand, other parts were quite interesting and, as I said, felt surprisingly relevant. They say the most enduring books are about human nature, which makes them timeless. That certainly would be the case here. If you want a good mystery to read at Halloween, about the darkness which lurks under the benign veneer of English country estates… well, read Hound of the Baskervilles. But if you want a second one to read after that, Hallowe’en Party is a good choice.

Now, I said above that the story is timeless, and so it could be adapted, like Shakespeare, into a different setting. And no doubt this is what the great Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh had in mind when he decided to adapt it to the setting of post-World War II Venice in his 2023 film, A Haunting in Venice, starring himself as Hercule Poirot and Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver.

I like Kenneth Branagh. He’s a great actor (who can forget his St. Crispin’s Day speech?) and he directed one of the few Marvel superhero movies that I have both seen and enjoyed. I also like Tina Fey. (“How could I not? I’m entranced by those mud-colored eyes… that splay-footed walk… and that whole situation right there…”) Seriously, though, I like both leads and of course the whole thing is set at Halloween. What could go wrong?

Well… a lot.

First of all, it’s not really accurate to say A Haunting in Venice is “based on” or “adapted from” Hallowe’en Party. You can’t even really say that Hallowe’en Party “inspired” A Haunting in Venice, even though the cover of my edition of the book does say that. I think it might be correct to say that A Haunting in Venice was “suggested by an incident in” Hallowe’en Party. Even better might be to do as W.S. Gilbert did with his play The Princess, which he called a “a respectful operatic perversion” of a poem by Tennyson. “A cinematic perversion of Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party” pretty much fits—no need, I think, for the “respectful.”

In the Branagh Version (not to be confused with The Browning Version) Poirot has retired to Venice, disillusioned with life, humanity, and God. Until one day Ariadne Oliver shows up and asks him to join her at a children’s Halloween Party being held at the palazzo of a wealthy diva whose daughter recently drowned by falling into the canal. But, to quote Richard and Linda Thompson, “did she jump or was she pushed“?

So, to cheer herself up, the grieving mother has decided to hold a party that features a shadow puppet show about the vengeful spirits of dead children as entertainment, followed by a séance to communicate with her dead daughter’s spirit. Make it make sense, I dare you.

Poirot quickly finds proof that the medium conducting the séance is a fraud. Even so, it does appear there is something ghostly and mysterious happening in the creepy palazzo. For example, the medium has Poirot put on her cloak and mask, after which he goes to bob for apples and has his head shoved under the water, but survives. The medium appears to be a slight, thin woman. How would her cloak even fit the portly Poirot? She may be a medium, but he’s definitely a large! Ba-dum tss. I’ll be here all week, folks.

But the medium won’t, because she gets mysteriously murdered while Poirot was being nearly drowned. This prompts Poirot to lock everyone in the palazzo, since they are all now suspects. Except not Ariadne, because she’s Poirot’s friend, so he enlists her help to solve the case. And they’ve got a tall task before them, because you see, it turns out that they are operating in a universe where nothing makes sense and normal rules of logic do not apply. It is the detective fiction equivalent of Calvinball.

In the end, Poirot figures out what really happened, which is more than I can say for myself. All I know is it’s a sordid tale of murder, revenge, betrayal, and ends up showing that you can never really trust anyone. Naturally, this helps Poirot rediscover his passion for work and apparently restores his faith in humanity???

And the stupidest part is, I sort of enjoyed it. The story may make absolutely no sense whatsoever, but the acting is good, and the aesthetics are absolutely top-notch. The vibe of being in a haunted palazzo during a storm on Halloween night is carried off beautifully, so much so that it takes a while before you notice how inane everything is. It’s like eating all your Halloween candy in one night: in the moment, it’s delicious, and it’s only afterward that you feel sick with the consequences. 

A Haunting in Venice is the epitome of style over substance. It looks amazing, and maybe if it were just a generic thriller, that would be enough to go on. But the whole appeal of detective fiction is the pleasure of seeing how all the pieces fit together in a logical chain. You can have a weird, supernatural story where tons of things are left unexplained. Some of my favorite stories are like that. Or you can have the denouement where the genius investigator explains how all the seemingly-unrelated events are actually part of a coherent whole. But ya can’t have both! 

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Book cover for 'The Sorcery of White Rats' by Adam Bertocci, featuring a silhouette of a girl against a vibrant, magical background with decorative elements.

How many books have you read involving prophecies about magical young people destined to save the world? I know, I know; it sounds like the tiredest trope in the world. Seemed like every work of YA fiction in the early 2000s had a premise like that.

Yet Mr. Bertocci, whom long-time readers will know from his slice-of-millennial-life short stories, takes this well-worn premise and makes it his own. I admit, when I read the synopsis of his debut novel, I was concerned he might have abandoned his own unique voice in favor of something clichéd but marketable.

I needn’t have worried. After only a few pages, it was clear that this would be no ordinary magical adventure. Bertocci has not forgotten the things that make his short stories powerful, but has instead fleshed out his typical themes into fuller form.

The story follows two young women, Bristol and Monroe, who are in the awkward mid-twenty years and still trying to figure life out. That is hard enough, but when Monroe awakens one day speaking in a strange voice and relating a terrifying vision of the end of the world, well, it really harshes their mellow, as people used to say.

Bristol takes Monroe to see her former friend, Xochitl, a neuroscientist who answers with scientific rationalism which is probably correct and deeply unsatisfying. Still not knowing whether to expect the end of the world or not, they are unsure what to do with themselves. Actually, they already were. But, you know, now it’s more so.

Bertocci has a way of writing that’s unlike anything else I’ve ever read. His conversations don’t read like scripts; but evolve organically, hopping from topic to topic, and making unexpected callbacks to earlier subjects. Like real people talking, in other words.

Interwoven throughout the action of the story are interviews with the three leads, commenting on what they did in the moment and how it all culminates in the surreal rooftop finale. 

And what exactly was the rooftop finale? Well, I’ll give you a hint: shades of Majora’s Mask. Earlier this year, I reviewed a book about a man plotting to destroy the sun to escape the dreariness of his life. The Sorcery of White Rats is an inversion of that, in more ways than one. Just as the ancients regarded the sun and moon as somehow opposite, so Awful, Ohio by Jeff Neal and this novel are similarly opposed. And yet, like the yin and yang, each contains a drop of the other, and their apparent opposition is in fact a system in perfect, harmonious cosmic balance.

More than that, I cannot say. Let’s just say that Bertocci does a great job of making it all feel real. I’ll leave it to you to discover how  far his commitment to the bit goes.

Now if you’re like me, you’re probably asking: “is this a book I can read during the Halloween season?” After all, October 31st is right around the corner, and one naturally hesitates to read, watch, or do anything that distracts from the Halloween spirit for even a single minute of this most excellent season. (At least I do. Everyone else does that too, right?)

Well, I’m glad to say that the author of that great Halloween short story Samantha, 25, on October 31 did not disappoint.  It is not a Halloween story per se, but it is certainly weird and magical enough to fit the mood of the season. So, hesitate no longer! Get thee to your preferred purveyor of fine literature and nab thyself a copy of The Sorcery of White Rats.

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“If you loved The Wizard of Oz,” the back of the DVD case informs me, “you’ll love accompanying Dorothy on this second thrilling adventure.”

Well, I don’t love The Wizard of Oz. I saw it on TV as a kid, and it left me cold. Sure, the transition from sepia to color must have been amazing in the ’30s, and the “it was all a dream–or was it?” ending hadn’t become a trope yet, but like Citizen Kane, it’s one of those movies that’s remarkable for its time, but is actually not that impressive.

Luckily, however, the box for Return to Oz is straight-up lying. If you loved The Wizard of Oz, this thing will probably strike you as a bizarre perversion; a downright nightmare. But if you’re like me… well, you can at least approach it with an open mind.

And of course, Wizard of Oz is based on a series of books, and the translation from page to screen altered the story a good deal. Return to Oz aimed to be more faithful to the source material, while still incorporating a few elements from the first film.

We start off with Dorothy back in Kansas, telling her aunt and uncle about her adventures in Oz. They of course don’t believe a word of it, and are concerned by her obsession with her imaginary friends. So they do what any concerned guardians would do: take her to get electroshock therapy from a smooth-talking doctor and his sinister nurse assistant at a Gothic asylum in the middle of nowhere.

And so Dorothy finds herself alone in a room–little more than a cell, really–at night, during a thunderstorm, waiting for the doctors to begin the treatment. While she waits, a mysterious blonde girl appears, ghost-like, and gives her a jack-o’-lantern to keep her company, before vanishing again as suddenly as she came.

The first 20 minutes of this film are pretty much a horror movie, culminating in the scene were she’s wheeled on a gurney to the electro-therapy room, hearing muffled screams of other patients as she goes. But just before the treatment can begin, lightning flashes, the power goes out, and the blonde girl reappears and releases Dorothy. They both flee into the stormy night, pursued by the furious nurse, finally plunging into a raging river to escape. Dorothy’s new friend disappears beneath the water, and Dorothy clings to a floating box for safety before finally falling asleep.

She awakens again in the land of Oz, accompanied now by her pet chicken Billina, who, like all animals in Oz, can talk. But Oz is much changed from when she last visited–the yellow brick road is in ruins, the Emerald City looks like Thomas Cole’s Desolation, its inhabitants turned to stone, and its streets patrolled by monstrous creatures known as “Wheelers,” which cackle insanely and threaten Dorothy and Billina. With the help of a clockwork automaton named Tik-Tok, Dorothy escapes the Wheelers and gets them to take her to the ruling power in the Emerald City, Princess Mombi.

Mombi lives in an ornate tower of gold and mirrors. She is a very beautiful woman. Actually, she is dozens of beautiful women, because she is a witch who keeps a collection of heads in glass cases, swapping them out as her whim dictates, like a fashion plate would switch her hats.

The scene where Mombi leads Dorothy through the winding hall of disembodied heads, all awake and staring back at her, might be even more disturbing than the earlier asylum scenes. It’s hard to say.

I’ve only described about half the film so far, but I don’t want to give everything away. While this is still a family-friendly picture, the ending, like all the best horror, is ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations. See if you can figure out what I mean!

But I hope what I’ve described above is enough to convince you that this is not your typical Disney movie. It has dark fantasy elements that feel distinctly unlike the lighthearted fare we normally get from the Mickey Mouse studio.

At the same time, it is also not simply a lazy conversion of a children’s story into a schlocky slasher film. Nowadays, if you hear they’ve made a “darker” sequel to a beloved story, you probably shudder–and you are right to do so! Cinema today has none of the craft displayed in Return to Oz, which is why it’s worthwhile to take a little time to discuss who made it.

Walter Murch is perhaps one of the greatest film editors of all time. (The only competitor I can think of would be Anne V. Coates.) He worked on such films as THX 1138, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and The English Patient. Return to Oz was his one and only directorial effort, and that’s a pity, because he clearly had a talent for filmmaking. In his short book, In The Blink of an Eye, he makes many noteworthy observations on the cinematic art, such as that seeing things in a discontinuous order, as opposed to one continuous “shot”, is a relatively new phenomenon for humans, who were used to seeing things strictly in order until the advent of film technology in the early 20th century.

And yet, our minds took to this new experience rather easily, Murch observes, probably because it is similar to the process of dreaming, which is the one other state apart from watching a film in which we see disconnected images presented one after another. Murch specifically likens the experience of viewing a film in the theater to that of dreaming, suggesting we must first enter the proper state in order to experience films properly.

Also interesting is Murch’s article, “A Digital Cinema of the Mind? Could Be”, included as a sort of appendix to In The Blink of an Eye. Written in 1999, it contains some very curious ideas:

So let’s suppose a technical apotheosis some time in the middle of the 21st century, when it somehow becomes possible for one person to make an entire feature film, with virtual actors. Would this be a good thing?

…Let’s go even further, and force the issue to its ultimate conclusion by supposing the diabolical invention of a black box that could directly convert a single person’s thoughts into a viewable cinematic reality. You would attach a series of electrodes to various points on your skull and simply think the film into existence.

Does this remind you of anything? Anything at all?

But, Murch optimistically predicts, cinema will never die off as an art form, because it is fundamentally a communal, collaborative experience:

The midcentury pessimism about the future of cinema, which foresaw a future ruled by television, overlooked the perennial human urge — at least as old as language itself — to leave the home and assemble in the fire-lit dark with like-minded strangers to listen to stories.

The cinematic experience is a recreation of this ancient practice of theatrical renewal and bonding in modern terms, except that the flames of the Stone Age campfire have been replaced by the shifting images that are telling the story itself. Flames that dance the same way every time the film is projected, but that kindle different dreams in the mind of each beholder, fuse the permanency of literature with the spontaneity of theater.

But I would like to emphasize the leaving of familiar surroundings. The theatrical-cinematic experience is really born the moment someone says, “Let’s go out.” Implicit in this phrase is a dissatisfaction with one’s familiar surroundings and the corresponding need to open oneself up in an uncontrolled way to something “other.” 

In his essays, we start to get an idea of why Murch’s Return to Oz works so well: it feels fundamentally like a dream. (Indeed, one possible interpretation is that the Oz parts are Dorothy’s dream.) And because Murch recognized that film is itself a kind of dreaming, he was able to wed his subject matter to his medium quite beautifully.

If you loved The Wizard of Oz, you may not like this darker, more eerie and ambiguous sequel. But if you enjoy an escape into the realm of dark fantasy, hearkening back to the days when fairy tales were anything but saccharine, you will find much to enjoy in Murch’s take on L. Frank Baum’s world.

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Longtime readers might remember that a few years ago I did a retrospective series on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and various adaptations of it. Had I known about this book at that time, I would have included it, because it’s another fine riff on the classic tale.

Our protagonist is Josie Penninger, a young woman cursed with the ability to see spirits. She lives in present-day Sleepy Hollow and makes a living working in her mother’s coffee shop and communicating with ghosts in her spare time.

But one day, a stranger comes to town, taking an interest in the prize of her mother’s collection of Sleepy Hollow paraphernalia: a copy of A History of New England Witchcraft said to have belonged to Ichabod Crane himself. The controversy over whether or not Ichabod Crane existed does nothing to diminish the value of the book.

From there, things get wild. Josie finds herself caught up in an inter-dimensional war in the spirit realm, involving the ghostly guardians of the town, a wise-cracking ghost hunter, and of course, the headless Hessian himself.

The plot is rather complicated, as it involves time-travel and all the mind-bending complexities that go along with such a story. But the dialogue is fast-paced and fun, and the action is like something out of an ’80s movie. The creative decision that ghosts can be shot makes for some easy-to-follow battles.

Nothing better summarizes this book than this simple fact: there is a scene where the Headless Horseman wields an M134 minigun. If this doesn’t tell you what kind of story this is, I don’t know what will. And, most delightfully, this scene is illustrated, so we get the full visual of an 18th century mercenary decked out in ammo belts.

That’s what this book is: classic folklore wedded to the sensibility of a Schwarzenegger movie. If that sounds like something you’d enjoy, check it out.

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Book cover of 'Betrayal of Trust' by Geoffrey M. Cooper, featuring a woman in a lab coat with long hair, holding a bloodied syringe, set in a medical environment.

What’s better than a Brad and Karen thriller from Geoffrey Cooper? A Brad and Karen and Martin Dawson thriller! If you read earlier books in the series, you know him as the soldier-turned-medical-researcher who is a good friend of Brad, and who has helped the duo out in the past. I always enjoy his scenes, and so I was delighted when he teamed up with them again, assuming he would once again heroically help them all work as a team to catch the killer, as he’s done before.

Well, the way it all works out in this book is a little different. But I can’t say how. Sorry, you’ll just have to read it. What I can say is that the book is about a mysterious killer who keeps striking important medical researchers. Brad and Karen’s theories regarding her motives are forced to evolve with each crime, until eventually the pattern emerges in an unsettling way.

But what I think I liked best of all about this book is what the title refers to. The betrayal in question could be multiple things, including one possibility that isn’t even connected directly to the killer. I like ambiguity and mystery, leaving things up to interpretation. For one thing, it’s what helps keep critics like me in business. 🙂

Jokes aside, this is another good book from Geoffrey Cooper. I have only one slight, nit-picky complaint. As always in Brad and Karen books, part of the fun is the good food the protagonists enjoy as they try to crack the case. But I felt like in this one, it was always a lobster dinner.

Now, lobster is no doubt a northeast staple, so I can’t claim its not authentic. But I want variety! One lobster dinner is okay, but can’t we have some other delicacies, too?

I kid, I kid. This isn’t really a complaint, or if it is, it’s only the kind of complaint a long-time fan of a series can make. Like the Star Wars fans who wish there was a movie all about Porkins or somebody; it’s the kind of complaint that comes from a place of love, and I always love reading a Brad and Karen adventure.

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You all know the story of Mothman. Well, maybe you don’t, but I do. Basically, in 1966 and ’67, there were numerous reports of a strange winged creature appearing in West Virginia and Southern Ohio. Towering and intimidating with its evil red eyes, the monster haunted the hills of Appalachia, terrifying people on lonely roads at night.

And then, in December 1967, as the feeling of fear built to an awful climax, the Silver Bridge collapsed, killing 46 people. And the Mothman was never seen again. (Or was he?)

John Keel was witness to many of these events. A Fortean writer in the business of chasing UFOs, he interviewed many of the citizens in and around the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia during this period. As well as many other oddballs who appeared, behaved very strangely, and then vanished.

If Keel’s account is to be believed, there was something very weird going on in West Virginia, and indeed, in the United States generally, during this period. There can be no doubt that there was “something happening” there, even if what it was “ain’t exactly clear.” (You can pretty much throw in the rest of the lyrics too; they all fit. And it’s worth noting that song was written in 1966!)

Keel was an entertaining writer, and the way he starts the book is very clever. He plays around with the way an event is described to remind the reader that things are often not what they seem. It’s the literary equivalent of Gene Wilder’s entrance as Willy Wonka, establishing right from the start that you can never be sure whether you can trust this character.

Unfortunately, while Keel could spin a good yarn, and his tales are often quite interesting, he never really does manage to establish what exactly we’re supposed to make of all the goings-on that he reports. A bunch of people saw and heard unusual things, including prophecies of various disasters, some of which happened, some of which did not, and some of which are too vague to say. I’m sorry, but if some non-human intelligence wants to impress me with its ability to forecast the future, it’s going to have to do better than “there will be unrest in the Middle East.” 

As an account of an eerie and surreal atmosphere, not to mention a history of the UFO craze in the late ’60s and early ’70s, it’s an engaging tale. As an attempt to prove any of Keel’s theories regarding preternatural phenomena, it’s kind of a failure, since the entire thing is nothing more than a compendium of what Keel either claimed to have seen himself or been told by others, with no supporting hard evidence. 

You will find my reaction put better than I could ever hope to express it in the words of Leonard Nimoy on The Simpsons:

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One thing about me is that I don’t like stories featuring violence against women. There are certain works of fiction I’ll just never be able to enjoy for this reason. For instance, the movie Strange Days. Although in many ways it sounds like something I would be interested in, I have never seen it because of certain plot elements.

I knew, just from the cover and the description, that this book was not the sort of thing I would normally read. But, Adam Bertocci is one of my favorite authors. I have enjoyed many of his literary short stories, usually featuring millennial women in a post-college malaise but otherwise unharmed. As I’ve said many times, Mr. Bertocci is the voice of our generation, and his fiction deserves to be widely-read.

And another thing about me is that I respect versatility and a willingness to experiment. So when I saw that an author noted for his wit, insight, and gently ironic sense of humor had written a horror story, I was naturally intrigued. And, not without trepidation, I picked it up and began to read.

The book tells the story of Wade, a high schooler who recently ended his relationship with Kiki Malone, shortly before she died in a car accident. The entire school and surrounding sleepy town of Red Corners is in mourning for the effervescent young girl, gone too soon.

But Wade’s relationship with her is far more complicated, and the circumstances that led to their breakup are more than just a simple school crush gone awry.

For the first three-quarters or so, the book is in many ways a standard Bertocci story. Witty and ironic, with more than a little clever one-liners. Some of the humor is more offensive than Bertocci’s usual fare, and this is because it comes from Wade’s friend Aaron, who is the epitome of the snarky, wise-cracking, too-cool-for-school loudmouth that I think every school has. But even Aaron has feelings—he just chooses to conceal them beneath a veneer of being an insensitive jackass.

And for those first three-quarters or so, I was thinking, “Oh, maybe I needn’t have worried. This isn’t so bad after all.” Like M.R. James before him, Bertocci knows that the really effective horror story has to first lull the reader into a false sense of security. James did it by making you think you were reading a normal Edwardian comedy of manners before he broke the seals and let slip the demons. Bertocci, of course, is not writing in the early 1900s, so he has to pitch for what qualifies as “normal” for his audience—that is, the typical American high school.

Then, in the final pages, the trap is sprung. The nightmare unfolds, in unsparing detail. And at the end, as is often the case with effective horror, we are left with more questions than answers. Who did what to whom, and why? Multiple answers suggest themselves. The influence of The Turn of the Screw looms heavily over this book. It’s what I call the “Did She Jump or Was She Pushed?” school of horror.

Well, I got what I was afraid I would get. But note the use of that word, “afraid.” It’s horror, isn’t it? If you read horror, and you’re afraid of it, and your fears prove justified, well… isn’t that the highest compliment you can pay a work of horror fiction?

This isn’t for everybody. It wasn’t even for me, but I still greatly admire how Bertocci crafted it. Is there anything darker than what lurks in the mind of an average high-school kid? This is what the book asks, and the answer is unsettling. If you want something raw, disturbing, and haunting, then this is most assuredly for you.

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A woman with gray hair and glasses holds a cake in front of a lighthouse, promoting the book 'Candy Apple Curse,' an Autumn Cozy Paranormal Mystery, by Eva Belle.

This book is the sequel to Harvest and Haunt: An Autumn Cozy Paranormal Mystery, which I reviewed last year. This one is much shorter, and isn’t so much a mystery as it is just a straight-up fantasy novella. Nova Powers is once again drawn into a case of supernatural doings when her aunt Grace is poisoned. Investigating the crime leads Nova to the door of a mysterious woman named Mary Lightning, who runs an occult bookshop. (Side note: once I make my fortune, perhaps I should open an occult bookshop.)

But, as in Harvest and Haunt, what matters here is not so much the plot. Nor is it the characters. No, here it’s all about the setting. Or, as the youth of today are apt to say, “the vibes, man.” (Usually, they say these “vibes” are “off” right before I tell them to get off my lawn. But I digress.)

These books are for enjoying of a cool Autumn evening, with a gentle rain and the Halloween lights glowing in the mist. The Pacific Northwest is ideal for this sort of thing, as David Lynch well knew, and Eva Bell does as well. The atmosphere does practically all the work of establishing a pleasingly eerie Autumn mood.

It’s true that I would have liked more emphasis on the mystery aspect, and I don’t think there were any scenes as memorable as in the first book, when Nova finds her yard filled with cornstalks on a dark and windy day. And I missed some of the supporting characters from the first book as well.

On the other hand, the end of the book includes what looks like a delicious cookie recipe, so there’s that. You’ve got to like any book that gives you instructions on how to enjoy the same meals as the characters you’ve just read about. Kinglsey Amis was entirely right about food making us feel more drawn into the world of the story, and that’s all you can ask from a cozy mystery.